Why Moving Away from Lead Targets Could Be the Key to Driving Revenue
In today’s digital landscape, the way customers make buying decisions has shifted dramatically. Gone are the days when buyers depended on direct sales pitches and company brochures to make informed choices. Now, buyers rely on a wealth of online resources—from social media to peer reviews—to form opinions well before ever talking to a sales rep. For businesses, this means that old-school lead generation may no longer be the best route to drive revenue.
Here’s why moving away from traditional lead targets and focusing on building brand trust through content could be a smarter strategy for long-term growth.
The Shift in Buyer Behavior: Why Traditional Leads Don’t Always Lead to Revenue
A decade ago, buyers’ research methods were relatively limited, with fewer options for obtaining objective information. Today, customers do their homework independently, examining online content, YouTube reviews, and peer recommendations. The buying journey is increasingly content-driven, where buyers shortlist potential solutions based on brand awareness and reputation long before they’re ready to talk.
If your business isn’t visible in these early stages, you risk being left out of the conversation entirely. Relying on generating leads and waiting for buyers to show interest means you’re already playing catch-up.
The Lead Quantity Fallacy: More Leads Don’t Equal More Revenue
It’s a common belief that more leads naturally lead to more revenue. However, a closer look often reveals diminishing returns. When you rank leads by quality, only a small fraction are likely to yield high revenue, while the rest might incur processing costs without delivering value.
Think about it this way: while the revenue from each new lead gradually drops, the effort and cost of processing each lead remain. When marketing focuses solely on lead generation, the sales team may get flooded with low-quality leads, preventing them from focusing on the higher-converting prospects. In fact, studies have shown that search ad leads often fall on the negative side of the profitability spectrum, indicating that not all leads are created equal.
Rethinking the Go-To-Market Strategy: Focus on Brand, Not Just Demand
To truly understand how to drive profitable growth, it’s essential to consider your available market and tailor your marketing to focus on brand-building activities. In a nutshell, a strong brand strategy primes potential customers for conversion, improving lead quality and warming up audiences who are genuinely interested.
Research by marketing experts Les Binet and Peter Field suggests that, on average, 70% of your budget should focus on brand-building initiatives, with the remaining 30% on sales activation. Companies that fall short of their growth goals tend to focus too heavily on demand generation, missing out on the long-term gains that brand-building brings.
Aligning Sales and Marketing: Quality Leads Over Quantity
There are four key lead types:
Inbound Leads – Prospects who show interest organically.
Warm Outbound Leads – Contacts reached by sales who are familiar with the brand.
Cold Outbound Leads – Prospects reached by sales with limited brand awareness.
Cold Leads – Often derived from misaligned marketing incentives, like gated assets or low-quality ads.
The goal is to focus on inbound and warm leads. This means giving marketing the resources needed to attract quality leads while avoiding the inefficiencies of over-investing in cold outreach. By building brand awareness, sales can engage with prospects who already have a positive perception of the company, streamlining the sales process and improving conversion rates.
The Power of Brand: Strengthening Every Stage of the Sales Funnel
A well-executed brand strategy pays off in multiple ways:
Increased Traffic and Inbound Leads: Prospective customers already familiar with your brand are more likely to seek you out.
Improved Outbound Conversion Rates: Familiarity shortens the sales cycle, as prospects need less convincing.
Enhanced Customer Retention: A strong brand creates loyalty, reducing churn and increasing lifetime value.
Reduced Sales Cycle: When prospects already know your brand and value proposition, sales reps spend less time explaining and more time closing.
Improve margins: A strong brand makes the pricing more inelastic and buyers more willing to pay a premium because of the higher perceived value
Unlike focusing solely on marketing-qualified leads, which often emphasizes bottom-of-the-funnel tactics, a brand-driven approach builds top-of-mind awareness among potential buyers. This ultimately leads to higher quality leads who are more likely to convert.
Moving Beyond MQLs and Multi-Touch Attribution: Embracing More Insightful Metrics
Multi-touch attribution tools attempt to track each customer interaction and attribute revenue accordingly. However, MTA has notable flaws, including incomplete data and a focus on the easily trackable bottom-of-funnel activities. Since MTA can’t reliably measure long-term, content-driven journeys, it’s a poor metric for assessing marketing’s real impact.
Instead, consider these more insightful metrics and methods to capture the effectiveness of your marketing efforts:
Sales Team Insights – Aligning with your sales team is an invaluable, low-tech approach to understanding what messaging works. Sales reps are closest to prospects and can often provide insights on why deals close and what messaging resonates. Simple questions like “How did you hear about us?” or “Why us?” can offer insights that MTA might miss.
Self-Attribution Forms – For higher-value leads, self-attribution (such as a form field asking “Where did you first hear about us?”) can pinpoint demand sources more accurately than attribution tools alone.
Traffic Segmentation – Using tools like Google Search Console, segment traffic between branded (your company’s name) and non-branded keywords to understand how brand-driven content influences site visits.
Marketing Mix Modeling – A more sophisticated approach, MMM analyzes the relationship between marketing spend, impressions, and revenue. While challenging for B2B with long sales cycles, MMM can still offer valuable insights when adapted for your specific needs.
Intent Data – Although not perfect, intent data can provide useful cues for your sales team about which companies are actively researching your category. When combined with other data, this can guide outreach efforts more effectively.
Conclusion: Embrace a Modern Approach to Drive Revenue
Moving away from a lead-focused approach doesn’t mean abandoning metrics or targets. Instead, it’s about recognizing that buyer behavior has changed—and adapting accordingly. By investing in brand-building activities, aligning marketing and sales on quality over quantity, and employing more nuanced measurement tools, you can better understand your market and position your company as the go-to choice when buyers are ready.
In today’s fast-paced digital world, the companies that succeed are those that meet buyers where they are—online, researching, and forming opinions well before reaching out. By moving away from old-school lead targets and embracing a brand-driven approach, you’ll set the stage for sustainable, long-term growth.